


Voices Interlude - Lazarus' Voice

by elixia13



Series: Voice Series [5]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Hospital, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-29
Updated: 2010-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elixia13/pseuds/elixia13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skinner ruminates over recent events.  Directly follows Voices III: Losing My Voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Voices Interlude - Lazarus' Voice

When I was in college after the war, I had to take a literature course  
to fulfill my requirements. I wasn't interested in literature at the  
time. I was a young man; I just wanted to finish classes so I could  
do something useful. In the end, I took the course that best fit my  
schedule, and it was Contemporary Poetry. I didn't really like most  
of it--didn't care to take the time to understand it. I think I was  
afraid to look too deeply within myself, afraid of what I might find.

This one poem, though, stuck with me. I don't have it in a book  
because I wouldn't care to read it, but oneline in particular has  
always stayed with me: "And like the cat, I have nine times to die.  
This is number three." I wasn't terribly interested in the author,  
who died ten years before I read her poem. The line caught me  
because, though I was barely 23, I had already died once, and I felt  
at times like a ghost among the living.

Now, I can truly say, this is number three. I died on that terrible  
day in the jungle. I died on a table in the hospital last month. I  
died in my lover's bed on Saturday morning. This is number three. I  
don't remember what came after that in the poem. Maybe Mulder knows;  
it seems more like his kind of thing. Moody. Depressing. Then  
again, I'm the one sitting here in bed thinking about death.

^^^

I thought I had my life all worked out. I would work quietly within  
the context of the Bureau to give what support I safely could to the  
X-Files. I would bail Mulder and Scully out of trouble when I had to.  
I would eschew personal involvement. I would go home to a drink and a  
book and an empty apartment. After what Mulder tried to pull on me, I  
knew I had to get out in order to ensure my own survival. If there's  
one thing I know how to do, it's survive.

But then I got sick, and there he was. Kind and pushy and beautiful.  
Grade A Mulder. But the amazing thing is that he's changed. He's  
grown up a little, gotten a little breathing room from his obsessions.  
I would be glad for the change, if it hadn't taken the world breaking  
his heart for it to happen.

Scully nearly died, blaming him. He killed that man and lied to me.  
He doesn't think I know, but I heard about that meeting with his  
"sister." His mother wouldn't speak to him. I turned cold. After  
the horrible tragedy with her daughter, Scully was pretty far away for  
a while.

I don't blame myself for pulling away from him, but I can see now what  
it did to him. the burning of his files, I think, broke him up into  
little pieces. What we have now is a new Mulder, reassembled in  
private, still a little raw. Until I got sick, he'd been resisting  
getting in deep with anything. He was running around, trying to find  
weird little cases to distract himself. Knowing Mulder, it wasn't  
working too well.

After I survived that second death, I thought I could go back to my  
well-planned life. I convinced myself that I could keep Krycek happy,  
that he would keep me alive. I convinced myself that I could live  
without Mulder, no matter that I dreamt of him each night. But then  
he showed up drunk at my door and challenged me to love him again.

What could I do but take him up on it?

^^^

I never would have expected it, but a heart attack hurts much worse  
than being shot. When I was shot in 'Nam, I hardly even felt it  
before I was out of my body, watching the whole gruesome spectacle.  
When I was shot a few years ago, it wasn't bad. It knocked me out,  
and when I came to they had me on the good drugs. Even when I was  
sick last month, I hardly thought of the pain. I had things to do; I  
had to find the answers and save myself. Pain was not a  
consideration.

But on Saturday morning I fell asleep in spent bliss with Fox Mulder  
in my arms. I woke up to my chest being crushed by a vise. My lungs  
were burning, my head was exploding, and there was nothing I could do.  
I was frozen, locked into my failing body, every cell seizing,  
contracting and screaming for oxygen. My brain refused to grant me  
unconsciousness. I was awake in agony for every second until my heart  
stopped.

And Mulder restarted it. It seems terribly--dare I say it?--poetic.  
The man who, mere hours before, had reeled me in from a life of  
loneliness had to physically breath life into me, convince my failing  
heart to continue. Scully told me that he Mulder saved me, that I  
might well have died were it not for his memory and his quickness. So  
now my life belongs to him; it's inevitable.

Of course it's held in loan from Alex Krycek. If I had died, by freak  
accident it would seem, wouldn't he have just spit? His brand new  
tool lost so fast, before I could even do him any favors. What a  
strange triangle we have. It's worthy of an X-File.

^^^

I expect Mulder will be coming back soon. He's been attached to my  
bedside like a limpet since I woke up. My first lucid thought, upon  
seeing his haggard face, was to make sure Scully would take care of  
him. I'm sure she did; she's good at that. The nurse just chased him  
off now, so I hope he's getting some dinner.

Tomorrow, we'll go home to my apartment. It's a blessing, in a way,  
that we can't do anything--sexually that is--for two weeks. We need  
some space to figure each other out again. I need some time to  
convince Mulder that he doesn't need to spend the rest of his life  
making his mistakes up to me. Maybe I need some time to learn how to  
feel immortal again.

I'm going to try to get him to go home tonight, but I have a feeling  
it's a losing battle. Seeing me die broke something in him, and being  
near me, watching me breathe is healing that rupture. Who am I to  
deny him that when he's been denied so many other comforts in his  
life?

So, he can sleep next to me in his chair. When I wake in the  
semi-darkness, I can run my fingers through his soft brown hair. I  
can watch his face smooth in sleep. Mulder, the eternal foolish  
child, is growing into middle age, but when he sleeps I can see the  
twelve-year-old who lost everything. I've also seen one or two grey  
strands in that thick hair of his.

I have a feeling I'll see more. That he'll see me lose the rest of  
what hair I have left. I have a feeling, if both of us can manage to  
survive our enemies, that we'll be old men together, with our annoying  
habits and a lot of books. With his fish and maybe a dog. I'd like a  
dog. And a cabin in the mountains after we retire. A fireplace and a  
big bed and a dog and Fox Mulder.

Jesus, it must be the drugs they're giving me because I'm turning into  
a sap.

^^^

I hear Mulder now, out in the hallway, telling the nurse that he'll be  
staying tonight. She's not too pleased, but he usually gets his way.  
I think he'll be staying. After all, I have six more lives left.

^^^^^^^^^


End file.
